I am terribly interested in defining space. I want to understand how an object affects the space in which it exists, how it is defined from its environment, and what might happen if that delineation did not take place. I like to explore the paradigms of inside and outside, of positive and negative space. So, surface is of crucial importance to me. Additive and subtractive techniques might reveal a hidden world beneath or behind the object’s surface. Pattern might offer the illusion of infinity. Texture brings it beyond the visual and into the realm of the tactile, allowing the viewer (and the artist) a secondary means of understanding.
My work is process driven. I reposition or erase elements throughout; I establish, edit, and remove edges. I want the materials to have a voice in the process, so each action leads to and informs the next. Marks, once made, cannot be undone, so with each change the entire composition shifts and adjusts. It is an organic progression, demanding reciprocity; and the work-in-progress takes on a life of its own. In this way, the object contributes to its own creation; and the scars that mark it denote its stages of growth. It becomes memory.
Aurora Pope